


Curiosity Killed the Cat

by wrhl



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Best Friends, Cemetery, Gay Subtext, Grave digging, M/M, Nerd!Frank, Nerd!Gerard, Pining, Teenagers, Urban Legends, Vampires, but oh is there lowkey pining, creepy legends, exhumation, graveyard, sitting in a graveyard, teenager!frank, teenager!gerard, they're not actually boyfriends in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 07:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9810191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrhl/pseuds/wrhl
Summary: Legend has it that Mary Louise was never really killed. Curious teens Frank and Gerard wait till the night to find out.





	

**Author's Note:**

> They're not actually together in this, a little pining I suppose, but it's not the main focus of the fic.

Gerard waited against the wall of the school, feeling the cold brick on his back. He should have worn a heavier jacket, but his cigarette was warming him plenty. He brought it to his lips as he stood there, looking for his friend amongst the myriad of teens leaving the school.

Frank was soon spotted and he walked to Gerard with a pep in his step and a smile that he couldn’t suppress on his face. “You know, one day, those’ll kill you,” he said to him.

They started walking, Gerard taking another drag from his cigarette before giving it to Frank. “And you won’t?”

Frank smiled like that and gladly took his share, savoring the taste of the smoke in his lungs before he handed it back to Gerard. “Fair enough.”

They walked, silent for a short while till they came upon the graveyard. Frank pushed the gate open and it squealed in protest but complied.

Gerard sighed as he walked through, Frank following. “We’re going to have to sit here all day,” he lamented.

“That’s what you get,” Frank said, shaking his head.

Gerard walked them to a tree near the grave they were soon to be invading. A shovel poked out from behind the oak, reminding him of what they were going to be doing soon.

“It wasn’t my idea. You’re the freak who thought this would be a good idea,” Gerard grumbled as situated his sketchbook on his lap.

Frank smiled and plucked the cigarette out of Gerard’s fingers, putting it to his lips. “You know you want to do it. Or else you wouldn’t have agreed to this.”

Gerard shrugged. He might have wanted to do it, out of morbid curiosity. But he didn’t want to admit it to his friend.”

“Oh, and by the way, why weren’t you in school today?” Frank asked, craning his neck to look at what Gerard was sketching.

He was drawing the grave in front of them, the one they were so keenly watching, waiting. He answered his friend, flicking the ash on the cigarette off to the side. He shrugged, “I wasn’t feeling too well. After staying out all night Saturday I got sick. So I stayed home with Mikey and watched movies.”

Frank took the cigarette from Gerard’s lips. His fingers gently brushed on his friend’s pink mouth. Gerard was the only one who didn’t think anything about it. Frank’s ears went red and he tried to play it off. But he was still acutely aware of the wetness on the paper from Gerard as he took a drag.

“You left me all alone. All alone and _bored_. All alone and bored and _planning,”_ he said rolling his head on his neck in annoyance.

Gerard rolled his eyes, shading the top of the grave with the side of his pencil. “Poor you, whatever will you do?” His voice was apathetic.

Frank huffed a sigh and gathered his legs in his arms, resting his head on his knees. “I missed you.” His voice was suddenly forlorn, but in the sickly sweet way where Gerard knew that he was only vaguely serious.

Gerard glanced over at him, dejected and already bored because he was messing with Gerard. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?” His voice was bitter.

Frank scoffed at that. “For like a week. So my mom would stop nagging me.” He stopped for a moment, thinking before he exclaimed in his defense. “And that was like a month ago. You can’t hold that over me forever.”

Gerard shrugged his shoulders and checked his watch. It was going to be a long evening.

 

Frank slouched against the tree, holding himself up by his elbows. They ached and his back hurt but he couldn’t bring himself to sit up. “So what did you tell your mom?” he asked.

The night was falling and if it was a regular evening, their parents would be worried that they weren’t home yet. The sun had started to go down and everything was the tint of a healthy, fresh bruise. Frank squinted to make out the black of the foliage in the distance.

Gerard scratched his neck. He would have to start shaving soon, he realized as he felt the telltale signs of hair growing on his face. “Your place.”

Frank nodded, replying with the same thing.

There was an air of boredom between the two friends. But it was punctuated with the buzz of anticipation. When the night was truly upon them they would do what they came here to do. And they were scared of what they would find, but they knew that they had to do it. Or else the curiosity would kill them for the rest of their life.

Frank licked his lips and he looked up at his friend, sitting slouched right next to him before he looked away at the grave.

_Mary Louise Colt born- March 12, 1856 died-?_

His body expanded with a sigh and he shuddered out his breath. He shoved his hands into his pockets. He was suddenly feeling even colder than he already was. He racked his brain for something to say, the silence making him even colder.

Gerard blessed him with words, his scratchy voice spilling out into Frank’s ears. “Are you scared?” It was not a question he wanted to answer, but the respite from the quiet was enough.

Frank knew that he couldn’t lie to his best friend, Gerard knew him better than that. But he tried anyway. “No.”

“Bullshit.” Bingo, he caught him, just like he knew he would.

“You’re scared,” Frank shot back. He sat up, his elbows were really hurting against the cold ground.

Gerard looked at his friend, hazel eyes shining in the dimming light like the stars already out to play, hanging in the sky like galactic nooses, beckoning for Frank.

Gerard waited for a moment, licking his lips before he answered. His words felt like they were trembling as they tumbled out of his mouth. “No.” He tried to lie.

“Bullshit.”

They looked away from each other, back at the grave.

“How’d she die again?” Frank asked.

“Supposedly,” Gerard’s voice was punctuated with air quotes before he continued, “She was killed by the townsfolk” Gerard’s voice felt faint in his ears but he digested the words.

“And if you dig her up she won’t be there because she was never killed in the first place? Because she’s a vampire?” he asked.

“It’s like you didn’t do any research into this, Frank, Jesus,” Gerard said, shaking his head as he checked his watch.

“Sorry! I didn’t get a chance to read that article you sent me.”

“This was your idea!” Gerard pointed out.

“I only suggested it because I knew you would want to do it! And I knew that you were too scared to do it alone.”

“Whatever,” Gerard said, standing up and wiping the dirt from his butt. “Let’s just get this over with. Don’t freak out, and we can go back to my house after this, if you want. My Blu-Ray copy of Return of the Jedi just came in.”

Frank stood up with his friend. “What if she’s not there?” he asked.

Gerard shrugged. “Then vampires are real. Don’t dwell on it.”

Frank stared at him for a few more moments, quiet, absorbing what he had to say before he shrugged his own shoulders and grabbed a shovel, Gerard having already started on the grave.

“What do we do if people see the ground was fucked with?” Frank asked with a trembling voice. He sniffed back snot. He broke into the ground, the dirt crunching under the shovel.

Gerard was being nonchalant but Frank knew he was scared, just like Frank was. Although, he had waited for this and he had this all planned out. “The caretaker barely comes over here. And besides, I don’t think he pays attention to what goes on.”

Frank wiped his snot on his sleeve and laughed. “Yeah, like the time Suzy Moreno and Dylan Leed played strip poker here last July.”

Gerard laughed at that. “I don’t even think that was real.”

“Suzy is way out of his league,” Frank agreed, nodding his head as he sat the dirt over in the pile next to him.

 

Frank really hated getting sweaty and being cold at the same time. It was such a weird feeling, like he had just dipped his entire body in salt water and then climbed out. It was so unnecessary. But he kept digging, till there was nothing but a ratty little coffin to show for his work.

Gerard put down his shovel and looked at him. “No matter what we find, we have to put the dirt back on. People saw us here,” he said, slowly, getting ready to pull up the lid to the coffin. He looked up at his friend with wide eyes, waiting for him to agree.

They were going to have to shovel the dirt back on, no matter how hastily. The caretaker could turn a blind eye to kids getting into the coffin, but it got real when they didn’t put the dirt back on, because that meant he had to. And that was when he got angry.

A few years back, Tommy Seewall didn’t put the dirt back on and the caretaker took him to court. He had to go to juvee for a few months and he came back missing a few teeth.

Frank shuddered at the thought and got his shovel ready. He was going to do this as fast as possible if there was evidence of a vampire prowling around. He wasn’t Buffy the Vampire Slayer, after all.

Although, seeing a human skeleton would freak him out anyway. In any case, he was going to be getting out of here fast.

He started to feel sick as he nodded, rocking back and forth on his feet with anticipation as he waited, staring at the dirty wood of the coffin top. Whatever he saw, he had to keep his composure, his friend was going to give him hell for it if he freaked out.

Gerard took a deep breath, gently flicking open the top of the coffin and looking down at it, not knowing what he wanted to see either.

They stared down at it for a little while in stunned silence. Before Gerard worked up the courage to close the lid and they got to work putting the dirt back into its place.

They were quiet as they worked, the dirt raining down onto the already dirty wood. Frank hurried himself but Gerard couldn’t seem to move any faster than the snail’s pace he was at currently, still staring with wide eyes like he was looking into the bed of the coffin.

“Come on, Gee. We gotta get out of here. Pile faster,” Frank mumbled to his friend, not feeling any better about what they saw.

Gerard nodded and he snapped out of his funk, starting to put heavier piles onto the top.

Soon they were out of dirt to shovel on, and while it looked like the dirt had been dug and then placed back on, they knew the caretaker wouldn’t care.

He wondered if he wondered what was in this coffin. He wondered if he had ever dug it up for his own curiosity or if he left that for the children.

Frank tugged at Gerard and they grabbed their backpacks, Frank hauling his over his shoulder as they pushed the gate open, getting out of there.

Gerard seemed to lag behind and Frank grabbed his hand. In any other situation, he would have thought about it more, debated on the signals it would send to his friend. But he didn’t care, he knew that Gerard needed his guiding hand to keep him steady.

He didn’t think that he would be the mind of reason in all of this, but he was. And he held Gerard’s hand as they walked back to his house from the cemetery, a block or two away.

They were quiet and Frank focused on the sound that his own feet made against the pavement. The soft scratching kept his mind from wandering in the night, back to the cemetery, back to the grave.

“You okay?” he asked, Gerard, his friend had been silent the entire walk and it was starting to unnerve Frank.

“I just didn’t know what to expect,” he said. His voice was trembling.

“Me neither.” Frank shook his head.

“I mean, after all these years of not knowing.” He sounded amazed.

“I know.” Frank agreed again.

“What we saw –” Gerard started, voice still wavering.

Frank cut him off. “Shh, don’t dwell on it.”

They walked on for a few more moments in silence before stepping up onto Gerard’s porch. They turned to each other in the yellow light of the porch light and Frank fixed Gerard’s hoodie, which had skewed to the side in their shoveling. “Act normal,” he instructed. He knew they were going to come across Gerard’s mom, and she would be suspicious if he was acting weird.

Gerard nodded and took a deep breath before they walked into the house, hands now by themselves.

“You boys studied late. Get everything you needed to done?” she asked, sitting on the couch, watching a movie on the screen.

Frank nodded, starting to walk up the stairs with Gerard in tow.

“You boys don’t stay up too late now. You have school tomorrow, you know,” she advised as they walked.

“Yes, ma’am!” Frank replied as they entered Gerard’s bedroom.

Gerard plopped his bag down next to the door and Frank followed suit. “Come on,” he told his friend, “Let’s watch some Star Wars.”

 


End file.
